


The Language Of Beasts

by henrywinters



Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, M/M, Minor Kim Wonshik | Ravi/Lee Hongbin, Not Really MINOR, They're A Side Pairing And Make A Heavy Appearance In The Second Half, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-01-30 06:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12647772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henrywinters/pseuds/henrywinters
Summary: For all his life, Taekwoon has longed for a feeling unbeknownst to him; something not even his own heart can decipher. But as the world changes around him — a life shifting into place he had never imagined — he is at last able to find a happiness found only in dreams.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Psithurisma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psithurisma/gifts).



> first off . . . where do i begin? i do not know much about fantasy, let alone urban fantasy, but because this is a fic written for a dear friend of mine, i was able to tap into a different side of myself ~ hopefully you all will enjoy it. pardon if it is not only cliched but extremely lame lmaooooo I TRIED !!!!
> 
>  **note** : this is told ultimately in two halves (or 3 chapters. thank you ao3 for not allowing a PROLOGUE setting orz); because the second half will take place many years after the first, and is in itself another story, i have separated them for the time being. pls anticipate soon enough though. 
> 
> **ANOTHER note** : the keo relationship in this story is 100% platonic. best friends in love ~ as this is a taekbin story in the end. pls don't expect much if you have come to read their relationship.

 

** Prologue  **

 

 

 

They lived among the grasslands of the countryside that summer. Two houses made separate by an acre of field. On one side was the Jung family: large by comparison, they were made up of two daughters and a son; a mother and a father. They lived comfortably in the house across the field where the world stretched finite towards the woodlands beyond. And deep in the night, when the moon was bellied full as crystalline white as oleanders in spring, one could see the burning of the kerosene lamps; the dancing flames of candlelight amid the windows pitted black. It was this light that was so familiar. Jaehwan would see the flickers across the grasslands and he would know Taekwoon was awake, and the fears of the lonesome fields abound would fall away and be replaced by indeterminable comfort. Jaehwan searched for this light often, for on the opposing side of the field was the Lee family and they were quite small.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jaehwan had been an only child. The wood-paneled hallway of his family home was decorated like an ode to his babyhood. Photographs of him atop the family car; running across the fields beyond the house toward the woodlands that barricaded them in safety; besides streams of frothing white, sparkling as water does. But amidst these photographs that posed as a shrine to a young boy, were photographs of him and Taekwoon. It had always been Taekwoon. Many of the photographs depicted them as severe young men, dressed properly in miniature suits with bow ties around their necks. They posed with Taekwoon's sisters; with both their parents. Young boys made to look like young men, ready to take on the world their fathers had paved for them. They had known each other longer than either boy could remember and even in youth, it seemed their adult lives were already planned for them. Their fathers had gone into business together long before their births, selling radios to farmlands; traveling salesmen set on building a business their children would inherit.

 

But when the cameras were off and their fathers were not home, the two of them would spend their days alone among the yawning trees of the forest; and the severity of their youthful faces was replaced by the laughing lines of the children they were. They came home dirty with smudges of earth across their moon pale faces; trousers ruined by grass stains and the skin on their palms coarse from climbing trees. They would stay out among the pines long into the night when the sky rose star speckled and black as a nylon drapery. When the earth fell quiet and it was as if they were the only two souls left alive, Taekwoon would guide Jaehwan by hand through the wisteria of the forest floor, across muddy paths towards home. And Jaehwan would follow, because sometimes the quietude proved too scary to endure alone. So like the candles in the dark of the windows at night, Taekwoon was like a flickering light Jaehwan searched for. It was as if they shared a bond neither boy could quite understand. But that summer of '27 proved to them that the ropes of their lives had been intertwined as finely as the vines of wild flowers: where one of them ended, the other began. For their bond was far deeper than blood.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

 _Oh, you fool, there are rules, I am coming for you_  
_You can run but you can't escape_  
_Darkness brings evil things, oh, the reckoning begins_  
_You will open the yawning grave_

— **Lord Huron**

 

 

 

**The Summer of '27**

 

 

The sun loomed omnipresent and hot as coals against the exposed nape of Jaehwan's neck. Heat blistered as sweltering as linen abound, wrapping him up in a cocoon of warmth almost too hot to withstand. Taekwoon stood in the clearing of the trees, his t-shirt discarded on a branch overhead; he was striking the tops of the stream with a hefty stick, sweating and angry.

 

“He's an asshole.”

 

Jaehwan deadpanned: “He'd kill you if he heard you say that.”

 

“Doesn't make him less of an asshole. It only proves my point.” He struck the water again, throwing up droplets like rain across the clearing.

 

At fourteen, Taekwoon was strikingly slender. His bones seemed made of twine: slim and flexible as wire as he thrashed out against the earth. But sinews of muscle coursed under his skin, bright as the sun in the sky; one could see his strong build for miles. Though just a boy, he was growing quickly into a man; and his father had noticed.

 

“He doesn't _care_ ,” Taekwoon said. “He doesn't care about anything but his money.”

 

Jaehwan, sat atop a boulder with his back towards the sun, listened as well as any twelve-year-old could. He watched the earth stir by his feet as the hot wind blew gently, feeling burdened by a spark of fear in his belly. It was as if he could feel the anger coursing through Taekwoon like a whirlwind: it was heady and searingly hot. It touched Jaehwan all over and made his skin prickle.

 

“I told him I don't want to take over the business. But he didn't listen.”

 

“You have to do it anyway,” Jaehwan said quietly. “They told us forever ago that we have to do it anyway.”

 

Taekwoon stopped hitting the water. He turned to Jaehwan with a fierceness in his eyes, but his voice mellow as song. “Is that what you want to do when you're grown up? You want to sell shit to people they don't need?”

 

“Some people need radios, don't they?” Jaehwan shifted his weight, unable to find comfort on the boulder. He was sweating in his shirtsleeves. “Besides, I dunno what I want to do.”

 

“Of course you don't. You're just a kid.”

 

Unfazed, but slightly stung, Jaehwan rolled his eyes. He watched with disinterest as Taekwoon turned back to the stream. Since they had been old enough to understand the importance of money, their fathers had made sure they knew what was expected of them. To take over the family business of door-to-door sales, of accounts from the cities where the buildings were taller than the highest oak—so tall in fact Jaehwan had heard they were enormous as Gods—did not seem as bad to him as it did to Taekwoon. Jaehwan did not think he would mind selling radios. He would not mind traveling out of the woods into the world where theaters burst with women clad in fur and pearls, the men in three piece suits as handsome as flowers in May; where they showed operas and plays made out of books.

 

“I don't care if you take over the business,” Taekwoon said solemnly. Without a doubt, he was able to feel the uncertainty Jaehwan felt. “It just sucks. You should be the older one. That way you can go and sell the radios and I'll stay here.”

 

“Why don't you tell your dad that?”

 

Taekwoon laughed. It was a nasty laugh, full of spite. “He'd never listen.”

 

The fear in Jaehwan's belly subsided and was quickly replaced by the immense hate Taekwoon emitted. It came like a storm cloud, ready to consume and control all that thrived around it. This was far from the first time Jaehwan had experienced such a resounding emotion from Taekwoon; it had seemed with the growing heat of the summer, Taekwoon's anger only grew stronger, as if something festered out of reach that even he could not control.

 

“I'm tired,” Jaehwan muttered.

 

“You're leaving?”

 

“You're being a baby.”

 

“I'm _not_ ,” Taekwoon barked. He must have heard it the tone of his voice then, because his face softened and at once he dropped the stick into the stream. “I mean, I don't know. I'm just pissed.”

 

“I know you are,” Jaehwan said.

 

He left out of the clearing, stepping over the winding trails of exposed tree root; the earth brittle beneath his boots. It was like walking across the dead leaves of autumn. Each step came as a crackling of sound. The birds jostled in the trees high overhead, out of view but able to be heard all the same.

 

Jaehwan had not so much as reached the edge of the pines when he was thrust forward by a solid weight against his back. He stumbled and was caught before he fell, exclaiming in haste as if he had been attacked. Taekwoon laughed beside him.

 

“I'm sorry,” he said between peels of laughter. He had worked himself back into his t-shirt, smelling of earth and dirt and boy. “I won't talk about my dad anymore, all right? Just don't run home to cry.”

 

Jaehwan hit him without thought. A solid _thwack_ against Taekwoon's chest that only made the older boy laugh ever harder. But it didn't matter, because Jaehwan could feel the curving of his own mouth; a smile falling into place as Taekwoon hooked an arm around his neck and pulled him out of the forest.

 

They walked together, arm over arm, over the expansive fields towards home, and they did not break apart until Jaehwan was walked to his door step where the wisteria grew wild up the sides of the house. Like orchids, the bright purple of the wisteria fell like petals against the deep wood of the porch, the steps that led upwards to the deep mahogany paneled door.

 

“Should we go out tonight?” Taekwoon asked.

 

“What are we gonna do?” Jaehwan asked back, though it never mattered. And when Taekwoon shrugged his shoulders, as uncertain as Jaehwan felt, they shared a brief torrent of excitement at the sheer thought of sneaking out after dark. Jaehwan believed it was the only reason they ever did it: to say that they had. That in their short time outside amid the darkness, their parents never knew where they were.

 

“I'll stop by after bed,” said Taekwoon. He left Jaehwan on the porch and sprinted back to his own house, meters away, where the birds nested atop the roof as comfortable and accepted as the flowery vines that spread across Jaehwan's porch. Then he slipped inside as Jaehwan slipped into his own house, as if mirroring one another. They were separated, but were still able to feel the impending excitement of coming night.

 

Inside, Jaehwan's mother was already preparing dinner. Mung bean and miso extended far out into the fields, but inside it was fervent as the smell of his father's pipe tobacco.

 

“You need to wash up,” his mother told him before Jaehwan had even stepped out of his shoes. “You're filthy.”

 

“How can you tell?”

 

His father grunted from where he reclined across the sofa. Accountant papers were spread out upon the coffee table. Without looking up, he said: “We can smell you.”

 

Jaehwan's ears flared red. “You _can't_! I wasn't even _doing_ anything out there.”

 

“You smell like the outside. Now go on, listen to your mother.”

 

Feigning anger, Jaehwan stalked upstairs to the bathroom where the basin rest against the claw-foot tub, water already collected there. It was verging on cold, but he did not want to waste time running fresh water; so discarded his shirt and quickly washed his face and arms. His mother would know he hadn't bathed properly, but as long as his hair was washed and he no longer carried the scent of the woods, Jaehwan didn't think she would mind.

 

It was not much longer before he trekked back downstairs where the food was being plated, but already his father had collected the papers into his briefcase and was relaxed with his feet upon the table and his pipe smoking in his left hand.

 

“Daddy?” Jaehwan said.

 

His father regarded him gently.

 

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Jaehwan leaned his head to his father's knee. They did not own a television, but the large radio set up in the corner crooned gently with the evening broadcast. It was a drama and by the sounds of the staccato music, it was a romantic one.

 

“I was talking to Taekwoonie and he said that his dad was already showing him the accountant papers? For the business?”

 

His father hummed. He puffed on his pipe and smoke as thick as smog curled steadily in the stale air around them.

 

“When do I get to see the papers?” Jaehwan wondered.

 

“When you're old enough.”

 

“I'm not old enough now?”

 

His father smiled. “Do you feel old enough?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

Extending his arms over his head in an enormous stretch, his father laughed. “If you don't know then you aren't. You should know that at least. You have to be certain before I can introduce you to everything.”

 

“Taekwoon isn't certain.”

 

“That's because he is hard-headed.”

 

Jaehwan flinched as if struck. “He isn't.”

 

“Your father doesn't mean it in a bad way,” Jaehwan's mother said as she set plates on the table. She stared hard at her husband. “He just means that Taekwoon is a little more free spirited than a boy his age ought to be.”

 

“Why do you say that?” Jaehwan asked his father.

 

“Why are we talking so seriously suddenly? Your mother's made dinner and we should eat before it gets cold.”

 

“But, daddy, I—” Quieted by a dispiriting hand upon his head, Jaehwan stared down at his lap. He disliked the feeling that rose inside him, heavy as lead and tasting of copper. In this moment, he could not tell if the dread that so fueled him was his own or perhaps his father's; or maybe, even so far away, he could still feel the growing anger that collected heady within Taekwoon.

 

For a while, the Lee family ate in silence, listening carefully in solitude of their own to the broadcast on the radio. Jaehwan did not care much for the romance of the story, but the music astounded him. It left him feeling giddy in his heart the way music so often did. And for this short while, the illness of emotion which had plagued him faded away; he was a child again. A child among his parents. He ate well and when the broadcast came to a crescendo of glittering music and then at once fell quiet, he listened to his parents speak of the city. His father had come home from a long trip away. He was tired, but still his voice rose handsome as bells in the quiet of their home, where the walls were made of wood and the floors covered in earthly colored carpets. He spoke and in his words Jaehwan found solace, because within these words was a future he so wanted to be a part of. The same future, it seemed, that Taekwoon did not want.

 

“Tell me,” his father told Jaehwan when night had fallen and the dishes had been cleaned. When the bath water had been ran and Jaehwan was properly bathed. The father tucked his son into bed and loomed over him, smelling of tobacco and earth.

 

He said again: “Tell me why you asked about the business earlier? Did Taekwoon say something about it to you?”

 

“Yes,” the boy said quietly, tucked beneath the safety of his blankets. He murmured with his mouth covered by the duvet: “He tells me everything.”

 

“As I expected.”

 

The bedroom was stifling this time of year. Never having installed air conditioning, the houses upon that acre of field grew thick with heat; the floorboards sweated beneath Jaehwan's feet whenever he pattered about barefoot. Tonight, the heat of the day had risen and it stuck like thick molasses in every corner of the bedroom.

 

“Can you open the window?” he asked his father, and his father did without qualm.

 

But when he came to sit upon the bed once again, his easy demeanor altered. He stared down at his son. “I don't want you to think that I don't wish to include you like Taekwoon's father does. It is only because that you're much younger that you haven't been shown the paperwork or talked to about the accounts.”

 

“I don't really care,” Jaehwan lied. He pushed himself further under the blankets.

 

“It's all right to care. You _should_ care. But what could a little boy want with a bunch of accounts?”

 

Jaehwan was quiet.

 

“What did Taekwoon say about it? Will you tell me?”

 

“He said he doesn't want to be in the business.”

 

His father nodded. “And you don't share this feeling?”

 

Shaking his head, Jaehwan told him: “I don't care, because I don't really think about it.”

 

“That's right. You're too young to worry about what you will do with your future. But one day,” his father promised, “you will care very much about your adult life. Until then, you shouldn't ask about the paperwork. You shouldn't even think of it yet.”

 

Looking out the bedroom window, his father watched the neighboring house with all its windows still alight with life and told Jaehwan: “The reason Taekwoon worries is because he is old enough to understand that his future won't be his own. I never wanted that for you. It's only because of the years and work I've put into this business that I worry no one will be here to care for it. And Taekwoon can't very well take care of it on his own, can he?”

 

Jaehwan shook his head. He believed perfectly well Taekwoon could handle the weight of the world upon his broadening shoulders, but that he simply wished not to. Jaehwan believed this and understood well, even at his young age, that he could not leave his best friend to endure such a trek on his own.

 

So he told his father, who stood with his back towards him: “I want to take care of the business. Like you.” But he was uncertain if this were true.

 

“Jaehwan-ah,” he said softly. “Have you been feeling different lately?” He spoke as if he dreamed and in this dream of his, the world was quiet as death. The hot winds of summer blew the leering cypress so that they bowed like servants at the foot of their lord. Jaehwan saw the trees and felt chilled.

 

“Not really,” Jaehwan said. “Why?”

 

“Intuition,” his father said simply. “I can tell you've been different.”

 

“Not me.”

 

“Then who? Taekwoon?” He looked over his shoulder. What a wonder it was to see the natural ease upon his father's face, as if he was the kindest man of them all. “You can tell me about it. Even if it sounds silly, because sometimes things do. You can tell me and I won't laugh at you.”

 

“You might.”

 

“I won't. I promise.”

 

It was a long moment before Jaehwan sat up in bed, the blankets pooled around his small, thin frame. He felt stranger speaking aloud all the feelings inside his head, but knew well that his father spoke honestly: he would never laugh. He had never laughed before. Not when Jaehwan complained of hearing thoughts that he was certain were not his own; not when the wind blew hard against the house in those wintry months and Jaehwan could sense without really knowing that a storm was coming.

 

He said: “Taekwoon's been angry. Really angry.”

 

“How do you know? Did he tell you?”

 

He shook his head. “I can. . . feel it sometimes. When he's close, I feel it.”

 

“The anger?”

 

Jaehwan nodded and looked away, struck suddenly by embarrassment. “It sounds stupid when I say it.”

 

“No, not stupid at all. It's normal.” And when Jaehwan peered curiously up at him, he said: “For us, at least.”

 

And that was how it always had been. Normal, but only for them. It was as if the families within those houses upon that field were of a different kind than all the others in the world. For them it was normal to know when the weather altered without hearing the forecasts from the city. It was normal to know the whereabouts of the forest creatures, of rabbits and egrets and all the infant skylarks bounding through the trees without being anywhere near them.

 

Normal, Jaehwan thought, was not normal at all. But he knew better than to question his father, no matter how good of a man he was he did not like to be questioned.

 

Instead, Jaehwan lay back in bed and accepted what his father said. He watched the ceiling and the dancing of the firelight of the kerosene lamp by his bedpost, and when his father touched his head gently and wished him a goodnight, Jaehwan waited for him to go before crawling out of bed and to the open window. Below, he could see the black of the fields and the rustling of the wisteria, the yew hedges along the forest rustled by the winds. He saw the candle in Taekwoon's bedroom window and watched the light until it festered and grew dim.

 

He had heard his father leave the house and had known by sound alone that the swift footsteps crossing the grassland belonged to him. The shadow in the doorway of the Jung house was his: a slender man with a loose gait, standing against the light so that he appeared more menacing than he truly was. And Jaehwan knew that he and Taekwoon would not go off into the dark tonight. Something had been said that struck strange in his father's head; Jaehwan could feel it. He only wished to know what it could be.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A few days later, when their fathers were out amidst the city, selling radios from door-to-door, the two boys stood still as death in the clearing of the forest. Cypress needles lay across the earth like a prickling blanket. The pines refused to sway against the coming summer storms. And lying in the dirt, with the drone of insects loud as machinery, was the dead dog.

 

Neither boy knew for certain what it was that had called them to this clearing, for it was much farther from the comfort of home than they had ever gone before. They could hear the rumbling of jet engines from the military base nearby; the flickers of light abound as if the sanctity of their life had been brought to the very edge. But even as chaos surrounded them, it did not puncture the silence the sight of the dead animal had caused. Jaehwan pushed a hand through his sun-bleached hair as emotion struck him blind.

 

“What do we do?” he asked quietly.

 

“It's dead,” Taekwoon responded slowly. “We can't do anything.”

 

“Are we gonna leave it?”

 

“No.” For the first time since they had found the dog, Taekwoon looked away from the body blackened by insects in silent search for—for what? Jaehwan wondered.

 

He knew better than to speak. Taekwoon had looked him in the eye and Jaehwan had seen the pain there. A redness had poured into his eyes; the inane bobbing of his Adam's apple as if he could not remember how to properly breathe. He was half delirious in shambles; Jaehwan felt it festering inside his own body.

 

“We'll bury it,” Taekwoon said at last. “Over here.” By hand, he led Jaehwan deeper into the woods where the birds rustled restlessly within their nests among the pines. Taekwoon dropped to his knees and patted the earth, searching for a soft spot; and once he found one, he started to dig.

 

It was easy to crouch down beside Taekwoon and join him. But as Jaehwan clawed at the ground, mounds of dirt stuffed beneath his nails and the cruel sound of roots being ripped from their homes like veins from a sprouting life, Jaehwan felt burdened and very scared. He did not want to touch the dog. He did not want to ever look at it again. Black with bugs that dispersed like rain clouds, buzzing loudly with a sound that left him half-crazed, Jaehwan did not think he would ever be able to rid himself of the terrible moment he had spotted the body on the ground.

 

Taekwoon stopped his digging and looked at him closely. He said: “It's all right. I'll get the dog and bring it here. Just help me dig the hole.”

 

They dug until the ground was no longer soft underneath them; until the pressure of digging pushed the dirt deep under their nails so that it hurt each time they touched the earth. And they did not stop until the hole spread wide as a grave. It was then Taekwoon took over. He led Jaehwan away from the hole and the dog where it lay in the clearing. He led him to stand between the trees at a distance far enough that he would not have to see anything if he did not wish to. And he said in a voice so stern it rattled Jaehwan to hear it: “Don't move from this spot.” There was something in his tone that pressured Jaehwan to not move at all. He struggled to keep still, breathing softly as if he feared the slightest misstep would bring Taekwoon running. But as he waited, able to hear the soft grunting of the other as he pulled the dog into the grave, Jaehwan watched the sway of the branches; sparrows, twittering softly, mourned above him.

 

Then, he began to cry.

 

It was a strange feeling as if Jaehwan was on the outside staring down at himself: a small boy standing amidst the forest with tears in his eyes that did not feel like they belonged to him. His heart seized up inside him as if a hand had reached into his chest and squeezed too tightly. Staggering back against the trunk of a nearby tree, Jaehwan closed his eyes tightly, but in the darkness within his own head he could see clearly the image of the dog in the ground and the dirt that covered it as Taekwoon kicked the earth into the grave. And the feeling that accompanied this vision was one of such grief it hounded him for months after: it was as if the dog that now lay buried in the ground was not a dog at all, but a piece of him removed and placed there. It was as if Taekwoon had buried them both that day.

 

“Taekwoonie,” he called out, his voice failing him terribly. Somehow he knew as he clawed at his drumming heart, pulling at the collar of his t-shirt as if this would ease the pressure of the pain inside him; he knew there would never be a moment in his life where he felt as helpless as he did now. “Taekwoonie, I want to go home now. _Right_ now!”

 

“Give me a minute.”

 

“ _No. —_ I want to go _home_.”

 

He was a child again. Reduced to the young boy he had always been; afraid and feeling ill as the sun burned white hot overhead. He did not move, because Taekwoon had told him not to, but disobedience flared inside him and demanded he run.

 

“I'm _leaving—_!”

 

“I'm coming,” Taekwoon soothed. And once beside Jaehwan, he put his arm around his small shoulders, guiding them both out of the woods and towards the fields where the air was warmer and smelled faintly of rain. He led them and did not speak above a whisper as he shushed Jaehwan's labored breathing.

 

“It's over now,” he said. “You don't have to think about it anymore. What are you crying for? There's nothing to cry about.”

 

“I'm _not_.”

 

“You are, but it's OK. There's nothing to cry about now.”

 

But it was not only Jaehwan who trembled with guilt as they walked the long walk back home. It was not only his voice which failed each time he spoke. Emotion so violent poured into them both, hot and pulsing; it was a feeling young boys of their age were not yet familiar with, but a feeling they would grow to recognize. That day in the woods would mark the turning point in their lives, and forever after Taekwoon's heart would be left open and desperate for a comfort he would not know for years to come.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Really you two,” Jaehwan's mother said brusquely. “Must you come home like this?”

 

She looked over her son and the boy beside him; both of them so similar in their ways it was as if she had two sons. Dirt covered their hands to their wrists, smudges across their cheeks; but Taekwoon was by far the worst. His clothes hung from his thin body, covered in earth and dirt and specks of grass. With a dish towel wrung between her small hands, Jaehwan's mother kissed her teeth. She was displeased with the dirt on her clean floors and the mud caked onto Jaehwan's shoes, but if ever there was an adult in their lives that understood that children were to be children for as long as they could be, it was her.

 

“Get upstairs,” she said, turning her back, “and wash up. And Taekwoon?”

 

He paused, looking over the banister. “Yes, ma'am?”

 

“I don't think your father will be back tonight, so your mother's decided to come here for dinner and to stay the night. So don't worry about heading home. You go grab something of Jaehwan's. Something _clean—_ ” she called loudly as the boys bounded up the stairs, two at a time. “I don't want to see you in the same clothes!”

 

But, already, they were gone.

 

Upstairs, where they fought to the be the first in the bathroom—shoving one another with soft laughter echoing the silent halls—they were able to forget, momentarily, the dead dog. And there, amidst the comfort of one another, Taekwoon ran the water until it was warm, filling the basin and plunging his hands in until the water reached his elbows.

 

Neither boy spoke as they scrubbed the dirt from their nails, taking turns to rinse each others hair with their heads bowed in the empty tub. The water spurted cold but refreshing, and when the tub was cleaned and the both of them dressed warmly with wet hair and soft hands, they filed downstairs where their mothers conversed over the open stove. The heavy smell of bleeding meat—still raw as it was seared in the pan—burst palpable in the small kitchen, both wonderful and terrible all at once. It made Jaehwan's nose curl.

 

“I think the evening drama is on,” Taekwoon's mother said. When she spoke, she spoke as lightly as her son, in a voice petal soft and oddly childish. It was with her that Jaehwan felt the smallest, as if all the years he had lived had not quite registered to her. He wasn't only a child, but an infant in her presence.

 

“Why don't you put it on, dear?” she said to Taekwoon, petting his damp head. “Maybe they're playing something good this time.”

 

Shying away, for he hated to be fussed over, Taekwoon stalked quietly to the radio. Jaehwan could recognize the distaste Taekwoon felt was not at all like the hatred so commonly coursing through him, but an embarrassment he hid well. But once felt, Jaehwan could not help but latch onto it.

 

He whispered, “Yes, _dear_ , why don't you put on the evening broadcast?” He went so far to change his voice, mocking Taekwoon's mother the best he could (which was not very well at all).

 

“I'm going to kill you,” Taekwoon whispered back sharply.

 

“Oh, _dear_ , you can't do _that_!”

 

He was unable to stop the bouts of laughter that soon followed. Laughing even when Taekwoon struck him. He didn't care when the radio was turned loud enough to mask their fighting so that Taekwoon could shove him onto the couch, pinning him beneath his slight weight. He was a small boy, but Jaehwan was smaller; and laughing until he was hoarse, Jaehwan screamed for mercy, tears blooming in his eyes. It felt good to hear Taekwoon's high-pitched laughter and to see him smiling broadly as he pulled himself from Jaehwan's small body. He collapsed on the floor with his legs crossed. Color coated cheeks and a sheen across his forehead; he appeared untroubled.

 

But, later, long after the evening broadcast had ended and their mothers shared a silence that only mothers could stand: embroidering handkerchiefs to the boisterous voice of the newsman, the boys were tucked warmly into bed; Taekwoon turned away from the open window, his heart suddenly too heavy for his birdlike body. He felt weak. He was scared. Even from across the room, Jaehwan could feel it as if electrical currents whirred to life, burning in the air between them, each one connected to Taekwoon's festering heart.

 

He called Taekwoon's name, but went unanswered. His own heart seized up as if the crushing weight of his whole body had fallen upon it. Then he rose from the comfort of his own bed and crawled into Taekwoon's. It was a cot Jaehwan's father had put together years before, saved for specific visits like this. It was small and very cramped, but neither boy seemed to mind. With his head grown tired, desperate for sleep, Jaehwan pressed the flat of his palm to the curve of Taekwoon's spine. And with this touch, he felt the ease of the weight inside him, knowing Taekwoon felt it too.

 

They slept this way throughout the night: Jaehwan's arm wrapped tightly around Taekwoon's middle, as tight as if he was clinging to his mother herself, and his face buried into the crisp cotton smell of Taekwoon's night shirt. And when morning came—the fluttering of birds atop the house and the inane laughter of woodpeckers so nearby among the trees—Jaehwan felt the light fall into him as if being filled with fresh water. He cleaned his teeth and then cleaned his face and joined his mother and Taekwoon in the kitchen, where bread was baking and the smell of fresh butter wafted dreamlike through the house; and never again did either of them speak of the dead dog.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Looking back, it would seem the change had not started until that day in the woods. But there were times in the years to come that Jaehwan could remember the odd signs in Taekwoon's behavior: the way he would wander off in the woods for hours without end, alone amidst the wildlife, able to pick up the sounds of scurrying rabbits, the scent of wild foxes feeding nearby. When asked how he knew these things, he would look to Jaehwan and shrug. Jaehwan had never thought to wonder if Taekwoon was lying, because he had never been a liar before. But later, after youth evaded him, Jaehwan would muse how ridiculous it seemed that Taekwoon had simply known these things, but even then, Jaehwan never doubted him.

 

Taekwoon ate his meat rare and in return grew broadly over the course of summer, so that when August came with the promise of autumn strong in the winds at night, Taekwoon had grown much taller and much wider. He appeared like a man. The lines of his face strong like paths through snow: they cut hard from his jaw to the long column of his neck, where the bone in his throat jostled sharply each time he spoke. His voice now cracked and became deeper. All the time Jaehwan remained the same. He was the young boy he had always been. Small, with his delicate bones like twigs threatening to crumble when pushed too hard. But he went unfazed, for youth was still in his grasp where he wanted it to be.

 

But then that fateful night came when the full moon rose and a storm brewed heavily in the west. When the birds flew from the trees as if startled by something much greater than them; and the wolf prowled heady inside all of them.

 

Jaehwan had been in bed, nearing sleep, when the screaming began. High-pitched and terrifying, like that of something dying. It could not be the sound of a human, he was sure. It was a sound he had never heard before, but one that he would hear again, and again, in the months to come. At the time, he did not yet know; and bolting upright in bed, Jaehwan had hurried to the window. Light burned brightly in the house across the field, where the sounds of slamming doors echoed thunderously. And then there came the sound of his own father's footsteps pounding down the stairs. The shriek of rusted bolts on the front door as it was thrown open. Then his father's shadow fell across the field as he bolted at a dead sprint. Inside Jaehwan, a pain bloomed sharply. He was sick with it. Hands gripping the ledge of the window, it was all he could do to stay upright as something emerged from the neighboring house: a bundle of limbs cast in shadow by the night, something entirely unreal as it fell to the ground.

 

It was when it tumbled down the porch steps of the neighboring house that it seemed the creature began to shift. At once, what had started as inhuman screaming altered and grew deep, until it was the sound of an animal yowling. The men emerged from the house behind it, gripping the creature and hurrying away into the quiet of the night. There, between the houses, was a shed where the men kept their plows, their wheelbarrows. It was a place the children were never to play, for the tools kept there were dangerous. But as Jaehwan watched his father disappear into the dark, hurling along with him a howling beast so frightening, he knew it was the shed they were going to.

 

The door to the bedroom came open, and Jaehwan, so disturbed by what he had seen, jumped away from the window with a startled cry.

 

“Lie down,” his mother urged. “Get back in bed.”

 

“What's happening?” His voice surfaced infinitely small, like the cry of an infant.

 

“Get in bed,” his mother demanded. “Get in bed and I'll tell you. But first—” She laid him down with the blankets pulled close to his chin. It was not the cold that made him shiver, but beneath the cocoon of warmth and safety, Jaehwan settled into his bones and calmed. “What did you see out there?”

 

“I don't know.”

 

“Did you see your father?”

 

Jaehwan nodded.

 

“And what else?”

 

“Taekwoon's father,” he whispered.

 

“And?”

 

He fell into himself. Pulling the blankets closer to his face, Jaehwan sank into the bed. He could not understand what he had seen and began to wonder if he had really seen anything at all.

 

“I don't know,” he said again. “Nothing.”

 

“You have to be honest with me. Or else there is nothing I can tell you.”

 

“I don't know what it was,” he choked. “I saw it, but I don't _know._ ” Shame came in treacherous waves as his voice broke. He was so suddenly small—too small. His body ached with the urge to cry. “What was it?”

 

“Come on,” she said. “Come out of bed and get your shoes on and get a coat. We'll go next door and—”

 

“I'm not going out there!”

 

“It's gone,” she soothed. Petting his head, Jaehwan's mother leaned down and promised: “There's nothing out there now.”

 

This did not stop Jaehwan from clutching the back of his mother's nightgown as they crossed the field to the neighboring house. Even inside, after they had closed the door which had been left open as if a great wind had blown inward, Jaehwan could not bring himself to part from her.

 

She pried his small fingers from her gown and ushered him toward the kitchen table. “You're fine,” she said. “Go sit down in the light. You'll be OK there.”

 

Jaehwan went, though he did not want to, and he sat, though he wished to be in bed again; and for a long time nothing happened.

 

Taekwoon's mother came from upstairs. Her housecoat was pulled tightly around her small, thin body; her hair pulled atop her head in a messy heap. She moved as ghosts are said to in the stories Taekwoon would tell late at night: the dim light of the kerosene lamp casting ugly, sallow light across her pale face. Her son was nowhere to be seen.

 

She looked across the table at Jaehwan and asked him, “Do you know what's happening?”

 

“No, ma'am.”

 

Turning to his mother, she said: “We ought to tell him.”

 

“They'll be furious if we do.”

 

Taekwoon's mother scoffed. Jaehwan could feel her distaste like bile in the back of his mouth. “What they should have done was tell them sooner than now. He's out there and he's _suffering_.”

 

A howl broke the silence of the windswept fields. It crooned sadly as if the creature it belonged to wept in its despair.

 

Taekwoon's mother groaned and laid her head on the table.

 

“Ma'am?” Jaehwan reached over the table and touched her hand. “Are you OK?”

 

“Why don't you go upstairs and lie down,” his mother said to him kindly. “Go lie down in Taekwoon's bed.”

 

“Where is Taekwoon?” Jaehwan suddenly needed to know. He was desperate to know. He rose from the table and turned about the room as if Taekwoon was hiding among the shadows. “Where is he?”

 

“Never mind that right now.”

 

“But where _is_ he?”

 

“Jaehwan-ah.” She leered over him, at once powerful. More powerful than he would ever remember her being. “You need to sleep.”

 

The ache of tears rose indefinitely until they spilled over, hot down his cheeks. He started to shiver. It was this moment Jaehwan would remember for the years to come: when he realized, though sparsely, what had happened in the field outside his window.

 

“The screaming,” he whined. “The screaming—is, is that—?”

 

His mother crouched low beside him. She pressed her forehead to the forehead of her child, and soothed him. Words were not spoken, but a spark moved between them that Jaehwan would think of in all the times of distress to follow. And with this spark, his heart was eased.

 

His mother's mouth came open as she started to speak, but never would Jaehwan know what she was going to say, for it was then the door flew open and his father came in. His footsteps thundered against the floorboards as blood welled from a wound on his shoulder. He saw his family at the dining table and stopped at once. It was a moment more before he thought better and turned away so that Jaehwan could not see the wound that festered. But by then, it was too late.

 

Sighing, his wife asked: “How is everything now?”

 

From the table, Taekwoon's mother groaned again, but did not lift her head.

 

“Calm,” he said. “Calmer, at least.” His eyes fell upon his son. “Why are you here? Why aren't you in bed?”

 

“He was awake. I found him in his room, at the window.” When she spoke, Jaehwan's mother's voice grew hard, but never rose above a whisper. “It's time that you talk to him.”

 

“Not now,” his father said. He moved through the house with a limp, as if he had been a part of a particularly nasty brawl. Jaehwan wondered if Taekwoon's father looked as bad. “I have to clean myself up and I need to go back out there. We can talk in the morning.”

 

A moment passed. Jaehwan was sure the night was finally coming to an end. But then his mother righted herself and she said clearly, calmly: “No.”

 

His father turned to her.

 

“I gave you twelve years. You can't have another night. You will tell him now, before it's too late.”

 

Taekwoon's mother had lifted her head and was watching them as the light from the kerosene lamp grew weaker. And for a very long time, nothing was said. Jaehwan's father went about the kitchen quietly, taking a handkerchief from a drawer and wetting it in the basin by the sink. He applied it to his arm; not once did he show sign of discomfort.

 

Then he walked to the table where his son sat, wondering what had happened to the world he had known such a short time ago, and laid a hand upon Jaehwan's shoulder. He told him kindly: “Well, your mother isn't wrong. I suppose I ought to tell you now.” He looked between his wife and son and sighed loudly, his head hung between his shoulders. “Let's go outside. I have something to show you.”

 

There was a need to know if what awaited him would be scary. A part of Jaehwan was desperate to hear that when he left the safety of the house, he would not be placed near the creature he had seen on the field. But too frightened to speak, he rose with his father and took the outstretched hand offered him. The back door of the Jung residence stood open with the thin light of the oil lamps reflecting like ghostly shadows onto the back porch. Jaehwan stood within the light as his father continued further out, placing a large distance between him and the boy.

 

“Where are you going?” Jaehwan called out, fervent with fear.

 

“Stay right there.”

 

His father walked to where the light did not reach, so that it was only the moonlight that lighted him. He shined beneath the preternatural white glow like frost upon a dew covered field, like rain crystallized on a windowpane. He did not appear real. Stepping forward, down the creaking steps of the back porch, Jaehwan lowered himself onto the field. He could feel the damp of the night air through the soles of his house slippers.

 

“I told you to stay there,” his father snapped. “If you can't listen, then I can't show you!”

 

Jaehwan did not move again.

 

As still as the night in the dead of summer, Jaehwan watched as his father stalked deeper into the dark. He looked over his shoulder as if to make sure his son still stood by the porch's edge, and how peculiar it was that the light shined from his eyes like beads of porcelain under lamp light.

 

“Now you watch,” he called back. Obscured by the dark, Jaehwan could not find the point that he was to focus upon. But then it seemed his father began to alter. His bones grew sharper, protruding as if he had fallen ill to famine; his shape changed as he discarded his shirt unto the ground. Then his trousers fell about his ankles where he stepped from them, unaffected by the expensive cloth and silks that now lay on the damp earth.

 

The wind in the trees began to cry out as if the world was weeping for the boy in the field whose father suddenly jolted to the ground. There was no sound as the change happened. Nothing, but the crackling of bones like wood inside a fire: the air rattled with a cornucopia of emotion too startling to feel all at once. Jaehwan succumbed to it, falling back onto the porch steps as he was certain he hallucinated the change before him.

 

His father's face elongated in the dark. His once small chin protruded out, the shimmering glare of his eyes like beads in the glossy black, too terrifying to look at. Bones moved in ways they were not supposed to; and soon the man was no longer a man at all, but a beast far greater than any Jaehwan had seen before.

 

A wolf stared out at him from across the field. Chocolate colored, with eyes that burned a steely grey brighter than the moon herself. It stalked nearer, as big as a horse, with its muzzle placed against the earth.

 

 _Daddy—?_ Jaehwan wondered.

 

A voice came into his head then. It came into him so like the feelings of others he had been plagued with all his youth. It was not so much like being spoken to, but rather it was as if an understanding occurred to him, like a thought he had already been thinking; one that struck him funny, as if someone else was putting together the words in his head.

 

 _This will happen to you too one day_ , it said. _To your children and to their children, for all of time. This is what you will be when the full moon rises._

 

The wolf pressed its cold muzzle to Jaehwan's neck, its breath hot and smelling of burnt wood. And like this, the boy and the beast understood one another; and it was as if all his life, Jaehwan had known deep in his bones that this was what he was meant to be.

 

Jaehwan breathed in. He smelled the wolf and smelled the air and his own fear mingled together like musk on the wind. _Don't be afraid_ , he was told. _There is nothing to be afraid of anymore_.

 

He touched his father's fur, the coarse hair along his spine where it prickled under his fingers. He felt the fluttering of the wolf's heart pulse inside his own body, certain that he had not loved his father before as much as he loved him now.

 

Time passed, calmly. The night was cold and still as if the creatures of the night knew to stay very far from here. And the silence went on for a very long time. But then a rustling on the field came fiercely through the quiet. The wolf's head shot up, one ear angled sideways. From the dark came Taekwoon's father, who was a large man, standing well over six foot. He came with a leisurely gait like that of a man defeated, and upon seeing the wolf in the boy's grasp, he stopped.

 

Looking to Jaehwan, his head fell. “We should have told you sooner. I'm sorry.”

 

“Can I see him?” Jaehwan cleared his throat. “Taekwoon? Where is he?”

 

“In the shed. He's sleeping now.”

 

“But can I?”

 

The men looked at one another as Jaehwan looked between them, curious of what was said in the intimacy of their thoughts. Then Taekwoon's father extended a hand. “Come along.”

 

The shed was not as small as perhaps one would think. It was a short building, but wider than the largest room in the Lee household. If put to the test, it could comfortably house each member of the two families; but it was a dark place and very damp. It smelled of motor oil and soiled earth with a lingering scent of fear that Jaehwan shied away from at once.

 

“You wanted to see,” said the man behind him, urging him forward.

 

The room was lit by a single oil lamp, dim as candlelight. There stood in the middle of the shed a large steal cage. It was locked by three individual locks that all closed from the outside; and housed inside, curled into a tight ball, was what Jaehwan could only assume was Taekwoon. He was hard to distinguish in the dark, but his fur burned the color of coal; so small in his steel prison.

 

“We have to keep him this way because it's his first full moon. We don't know how it will affect him.”

 

Jaehwan looked up at the man beside him. “He has to stay there all night?”

 

“Yes, until morning, when he changes back. One day, when you begin to change, you will be kept here too, until you learn to control it.” He closed the shed door. “Now let him sleep. He's had a long night.”

 

“He isn't cold in there?”

 

“Don't worry about that. But, certainly, he's fine.” He guided Jaehwan across the field with a heavy hand upon his birdlike shoulder. At the bottom of the porch steps, he said: “Go inside to your mother. It's late and your father wants you in bed now.”

 

Behind him, the wolf prowled; its eyes like pinpoints of light in the dark. The understanding that he was to go inside and go to bed at once blossomed inside Jaehwan as if he had heard his father speak to him aloud.

 

“In the morning, Taekwoon will be fine,” Jaehwan was told. “He'll be back to the boy you know. But he'll be shaken up. You have to remember that.”

 

Jaehwan promised he would, and scurrying up the steps, he ran to his mother who was sat at the dining table with her hands cradled together. Upon seeing her son, she straightened at once.

 

“What is it?” she asked.

 

“Are you like them? Do you change too?”

 

She smiled. “No, dear. It isn't a part of my genes.”

 

“But it's a part of mine?” he despaired. “I'll be like that? And I'll be kept in a cage too? I don't _want_ to be in a cage!”

 

She silenced him and pulled him into her lap. Ordinarily, Jaehwan would not allow his mother to do such a thing, but tonight, he felt much younger than he was. To be coddled by his mother was to be safe.

 

“It isn't guaranteed. Your father—and Taekwoon's father, too—have brothers and sisters that never inherited it. But it's a possibility that one day, yes, you'll be like Taekwoon out there. But you'll learn to control it.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

“Because your father learned. So you can too.” She kissed his hair and urged him upstairs where she placed him in Taekwoon's bed. The sheets smelled differently than those at home. They were heavier and much warmer, like a cocoon wrapped tightly around him.

 

“You'll feel better in the morning,” his mother promised. “And so will Taekwoon. Do you want me to leave the door open?”

 

“Yes,” he whispered. “And the light on.”

 

“I'll leave it until it burns out.”

 

When his mother had gone and all that was left was the yellow glow of the candle on the bedside, the open window and the moon so like a face hovering above the pines, Jaehwan feared sleep would not take him. And for a long time, it did not. He lay awake, listening to the rustle of the trees, in and out of sleep like wading black waters too cold to fall into.

 

The candle burned out and the dark was overwhelming. Jaehwan, able to hear the soft snores of his mother down the hall, rose from the comfort of Taekwoon's bed and padded downstairs, barefoot. His bones were tired. His head felt stuffed, impossible to think through the haze which plagued him. Outside, in the swarming cold, his wits returned and he understood what it was that he wanted to do.

 

It was terrifying to walk those fields alone, unsure if his father was nearby. But the world was kind and very quiet; the trees stilled and the creatures in the dark did not stir. He was alone and he knew it.

 

Outside the shed, Jaehwan pushed open the door, cringing as the hinges creaked. Inside, it was utterly dark. The lamp had burned low and then burned out and not an inch of light came from the back window, for the glass was clouded over with paint and grime.

 

“Taekwoonie?” He stepped further in. “Are you still here?”

 

Eyes flickered in the dark, black as beetles.

 

Blind and cold, Jaehwan reached out with his hands and felt the cold side of the metal cage. He crouched low beside it, able to feel the grit beneath his soft-soled feet. He paid no mind to the fear which ebbed like flowering waters inside him and pushed his fingers through the brackets of the cage. Taekwoon's fur was not coarse like his father's had been, but soft like down; like a cub. Jaehwan pushed his fingers until he could feel the knobs of Taekwoon's spine, rounded and strange, just like an animals.

 

“Taekwoonie,” Jaehwan whispered sadly. “Are you OK?”

 

The wolf rose suddenly. It clamored in its cell, whining lowly in its throat. It was a soft sound, but one certain to be heard by the others. Jaehwan soothed him softly, reaching further into the cage to feel the wet snout.

 

“I knew you'd be cold,” he said. “I didn't bring a blanket though. Your mom would kill me.”

 

Taekwoon lay back down. By now, the dust over the floor had dispersed and Jaehwan's eyes had adjusted to the dark. He could see the outline of the wolf, lying still, its muzzle placed upon its crossed paws.

 

Slowly, and without much thought, Jaehwan unlocked the cage. The door creaked quietly when he opened it and the wolf did not stir. A part of him feared Taekwoon would bolt, jumping from his confinement out into the dark beyond, but he seemed lackluster. As if he had been dealt with death and was now accepting it.

 

“I'll only stay a little while,” Jaehwan said as he crawled into the cage. Even with the two of them inside, the cage was still spacious; it spread open like a room, able to house the two of them comfortably. But the ground was metal and it hurt against Jaehwan's bones as he lay beside the wolf, fur tickling his nose.

 

Sleep came then. It came much faster than Jaehwan had anticipated. His eyes drooped and fell shut as he mused to Taekwoon with the voice in his head that he could not believe, couldn't believe it at all, the animals they were. Taekwoon never spoke back, but he laid his chin atop Jaehwan's hand as he reached out in the dark and wrapped his small fingers around the wolf's massive paw. Such a big paw, he thought, for such a small boy.

 

Morning brought fresh dew on the fields and the laughter of the birds in the trees. It came cold as ice upon Jaehwan's face and when he woke beside Taekwoon who was now human and naked, he pressed his face into the thick mane of messy hair. It smelled of boy, of dust and sweat.

 

“You're you again,” Jaehwan whispered.

 

Taekwoon's eyes opened. He looked around the shed as if he had never seen it before, his pupils so large his eyes were black. His heart raced in his temples. Then a thought trickled into Jaehwan's head that was not his own at all. Simple words mustered so faintly it was as if he had dreamed them: _Am I really?_

 

* * *

 

 

“It's best if you leave him be for a while,” Jaehwan's mother told him in the time that followed Taekwoon's first change. “He has a lot to think about, and so do you.”

 

Jaehwan had heard what his mother said and he had listened. He understood, vaguely, that Taekwoon would have to plunge through the emotions that beset him—emotions Jaehwan could feel over the course of time grow stronger, like the winds of a raging storm that threatened, but would not strike—but never had Jaehwan imagined the amount of time Taekwoon's growth demanded.

 

It was not as if Taekwoon had stolen away into the solitude of his bedroom. He did not turn Jaehwan away whenever he came to visit, hoping for a glimpse into Taekwoon's head and all the thoughts that manifested there. He was kind as he had always been. But in their time together, Taekwoon became despondent. He would crowd round the radio with his head lowered, listening to the evening broadcast with feigned interest. He would sit alone upon the porch steps with his face buried into his crossed arms, refusing acknowledgment when Jaehwan came to sit beside him. No longer did they venture into the woods after dark. Their evenings together were short and very dry; and after each full moon, Jaehwan would wake with illness in his belly, his bones sore as if he had been the one locked inside the cage for all of time.

 

“Was daddy like this?” Jaehwan asked one wintry morning when the snow began to fall. Flecks of ice stuck to the windows, melting almost at once, so that it was like a frosted rain fell across the fields. “Do you know?”

 

His mother turned to him with tea kettle in hand, a sadness in her aging face. “I only know what I'm told and I'm told it's very normal. It's expected.”

 

“I miss him.”

 

“I know you do.” She came and laid a hand upon her son's head. “But you have to give him time. When you love someone, you give them what they need.”

 

Those winter days were filled with winding darkness. It came in waves like wisteria climbing the columns of Jaehwan's bones. He endured it well as his heart grew cold and distant, reaching out in the night to feel whatever it was Taekwoon felt, hoping in this way to lure him back. Their father's were gone most of that winter as they had been all the winters before. But Jaehwan did not believe anymore that they were out in the city, selling radios to large corporations as fervently as they had said. And with his mother's stories of youth, of the times before Jaehwan was born, he learned now all the secrets kept from him: how his father used to leave for weeks on end to live among the firs and the wildlife abound. He had left home for a year in the infancy of his marriage and had led a pack of wolves— _ordinary wolves_ , his mother said, _ones that did not change and could not understand why this newcomer was so unlike them_. She had made him go. Able to understand the wildness in his eyes, Jaehwan's mother had refused to live with a beast, and had forced her husband into the cold until it was as if he had ran the beast from his bones, so that he came back ready to be the man he had promised to be.

 

“That's when I knew I really loved him,” she explained one evening as Jaehwan listened by candlelight, his eyes two burning stars in his small boyish face. “One day, you'll understand everything a little better. Maybe you'll even find someone to love the way that I love your father, and if you do—if you trust them the way that you trust me, or Taekwoon, then you can share this secret with them. But only them.”

 

Jaehwan looked up at his mother, wearily. “But how do you know that I'll change too? You said, you said that only some people inherit it.”

 

“Because you're already changing. Slowly, but you are. That's why you can feel what others feel.” She took his small hand into her own. “That's why you can hear what they're thinking too.”

 

Jaehwan startled slightly, watching his mother's moon-like face glowing white in the dark. “Did daddy tell you that?”

 

“Of course he did. It'll be how you communicate when you're older. Because, really, wouldn't it be silly if an animal could speak in human languages?”

 

Jaehwan laughed despite himself, his heart fluttering as if desperate for the joy he momentarily felt. Then he became quiet again, stoic in the cold dark as night fell all around him.

 

That night he crawled into bed feeling lighter and a little better, but wary of the time to follow. With each full moon he became tense, wondering when it was the change would seize him, stealing him away into the cruel darkness Taekwoon had burrowed into. Would it hurt, Jaehwan often wondered, or would the knowledge if its impending arrival lessen the pain? At his young age, it was difficult to find a silver lining to something he would forcefully surrender to. When sleep came, it was not sound, but he fell into it easily all the same. But soon, he was woken at an indeterminable time later. The night still festered. The cold came jauntily through the open window. There was a voice inside his head, soft as a whisper, uttering his name.

 

Jaehwan rose out of bed and to the window, where he thrust his head out into the cold. Below, hands in his pockets and his hair blown back against the winds, Taekwoon stared up at him.

 

“Come down,” he said.

 

“It's cold,” Jaehwan said back.

 

“Come anyway.”

 

Excitement wound itself tightly around Jaehwan's heart, gripping him in an almost painful embrace. He bound quietly from his bedroom to the front door where he first slipped into his winter coat and then slipped outside. At the bottom of the porch, Taekwoon awaited him.

 

“Are you OK?” Jaehwan asked at once, embarrassed by the urgency of his tone. He shied away as Taekwoon smiled up at him.

 

“I'm fine,” he said.

 

Astride one another, they walked out toward the woods as the night embraced them. It was as if the wild of the world had missed their presence among the trees. The wind fell to a soft fluttering like birds wings against Jaehwan's bare face; the moon was but a dove white sliver above them, small but bright as it lit the way through the fields.

 

In a clearing in the woods, sat upon the ground, Taekwoon leaned his back to the massive base of a pine. Needles dispersed around them, glittering in the dim light.

 

Taekwoon looked up at Jaehwan who stood over him, his small body engulfed in his massive winter coat, looking so strange in the dark; staring curiously down at the boy that was not really a boy anymore. Taekwoon's face had widened. The bones were sharper, his eyes more narrow. Even his shoulders slouched differently, as if the world had fallen upon them, making it harder for him to relax.

 

“What is it?” Jaehwan asked. He felt discomfort rise between them. It was not a discomfort of proximity, but Taekwoon's struggle to find words that suited him. Floundering under great waves which blinded, Taekwoon sat and never spoke, but Jaehwan felt it all: the apology bottled up inside him, the worry that he was a boy unloved.

 

In a flourish of motion, Jaehwan threw himself down and around Taekwoon's shoulders. It seemed a strange thing to do, for in all the time they had been together Jaehwan had never held Taekwoon in such an embrace. But as they sat upon the earth with the world quieting around them, Jaehwan closed his eyes and willed the beating of his heart to match the beating of Taekwoon's own.

 

The night rustled through the leaves and the language of the trees soared like whispers above them; and a calmness came and swept low into the pit of Jaehwan's belly and he knew it was his own doing, that Taekwoon could feel it too within his own bones.

 

Taekwoon sighed greatly and put his hands on Jaehwan's shoulders, gently prying his arms away. He then guided him onto the ground so that they sat side-by-side, mirroring one another, staring out into the dark. To any passersby they would appear just as they were: two boys amidst the trees, comfortable in their shared silence. Never would a soul assume their hearts beat differently. It would be this guise they would hide under as time altered them, changing them from the curious boys of youth to men of the world, taken from the trees and placed among the wilderness of humans. But until that day came, they would continue their lives among the pines where the birds flourished through the trees, calling to one another; where the moon was like a beacon set so low to the earth it was impossible to miss her. And they would remain the only years Taekwoon would recall being happy; when the desire of the world wound inside him like something alive, ever changing. He would look upon the lights of the city, of a world he did not know, in search of something that his heart yearned for; and it would be a long time before he found what it was his body so deeply desired. A lifetime spent in the monochromatic world of boulevards, of grey metal buildings terrifying in ways the wild could never be; staring out into a vastly strange realm so unlike the world of childhood as if he was staring into the dark of a long and winding hall with no clear way out.


End file.
